


How are you, stranger?

by Howling_Harpy



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Bittersweet, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Phone Calls & Telephones, Regret, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 22:31:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20897180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Howling_Harpy/pseuds/Howling_Harpy
Summary: Dick wakes up to a ringing phone in the middle of the night and answers to someone whom he hasn't spoken with in years.





	How are you, stranger?

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by depressing classic rock lyrics and the old cliche of drunkdialing your ex. 
> 
> Disclaimer: This is a piece of fiction based on the HBO drama series and the actors’ portrayals in it. This has nothing to do with any real person represented in the series, and means no disrespect.

Dick was startled awake in the dead of night and for a moment didn’t know why. He fumbled in his bed, wrapped in the sheets and for a moment wildly thought it was an alarm, but a second later realized it was the telephone. 

Dick squinted at the clock on his nightstand. It was almost half past one in the morning, and still the demanding ring of the telephone wouldn’t give up. Annoyed, Dick pushed himself up from the bed and went to the hallway to pick up. 

“Winters resident, Richard Winters speaking,” Dick spoke into the receiver. 

“Oh, hello, Dick,” spoke the slightly distorted, slightly slurred yet still unmistakable voice of Lewis Nixon. 

Dick felt his heart give a painful thump and he squeezed the receiver tighter. “Nix. Do you have any idea what time it is? What do you want?” 

“Yeah, I think I do – Sorry about that. I just… Well,” Nix slurred on, searching for the point that may or may not have existed in the first place. “Just that… How are you?”

Dick blinked. He wasn’t entirely sure he had heard that one right. “How am I?” he repeated. “You call me in the middle of the night after all these years to ask me that?” 

On the other end Nix sniffed, and Dick hated a little bit how he knew with certainty that Nix had just shrugged and wrinkled his nose. 

“Well, yeah,” Nix said, drawing out the words. “How long has it been?” 

Dick pinched his mouth into a thin line. Not all his irritation was due to being awakened at this hour. “Since I left New Jersey or since we last spoke with each other?”

“I don’t know… Either?”

“Five years and a little over three.” 

“Yeah… That’s a… That’s a long time, isn’t it?” 

Dick let out a deep sigh through his nose and leaned his free hand on the wall. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep any time soon. “Yes, it is,” he almost snapped. 

On the other end, Nix swallowed. Dick imagined a whiskey bottle in his hand, probably already half empty and not the first one in a row, and bit his lower lip so hard it hurt. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Nix muttered, “did I wake you up?”

Dick huffed an irritated dry laugh. “It’s half past one in the morning, Nix. What do you think?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, sorry about that. I just… Well, I was just thinking.” 

“You could have thought in the morning. Maybe written me a letter,” Dick answered. 

Nix didn’t pay the cold interruption any mind, just carried on: “I was just thinking about us, you know? Whatever happened to us?”

Dick felt his heart skipping a beat and then slamming against his sternum. For a long while he didn’t know what to say or how to speak past the bitter bile raising in his mouth, and Nix didn’t say anything either, just breathed into the receiver. 

“I’m sorry, was that a question?” Dick asked in a thin voice when he could speak again.

Nix sniffled again. “Kind of,” he admitted.

For a moment Dick squeezed his eyes shut. He was cold in the hallway just in his briefs and undershirt. He didn’t know what to say as there was nothing he hadn’t said before, and they had both been present the entire time of their downfall after all. 

After a minute of silence, Nix continued his musings: “Because I’ve been thinking about it a lot for a long time, and I don’t get it. It’s all so stupid. How was it so easy at first? It was the easiest thing in the world while we were over there, and it shouldn’t have been, you know? I don’t know if we were just far enough from home or was it the war and how it turned everything upside down, but it was so natural over there. And I knew the risks too, I was an intelligence officer for Christ’s sake, and I heard all kinds of stuff, but just being with you was worth the risk.”

There was a throbbing of an old pain in Dick’s chest as he listened. He leaned fully on the wall and tapped the cold floor with his toe. He couldn’t decide if it was lucky or unlucky for him that Nix didn’t seem to expect any sort of input from him but continued talking. 

“You know, I actually hated the war and I hated the army. It was all so stupid and worthless, and I hate that I was my best self there,” Nix said, his voice sluggish but still determined as if he was giving a well-practiced speech. “I was a damn good intelligence officer too. I know that because I’m such a lousy excuse of a man in everything else. Damn… That’s one sad thing to realize about oneself, isn’t it?”

Dick felt a familiar instinct to counter and comfort but he forced that down. Nix had always looked for that, but it had never done anything good, just brushed aside things that should not be ignored. “I’m not doing this with you now, Nix, not this late and especially not after all these years.”

“Don’t you ever think about us, Dick?” 

Dick swallowed around a lump in his throat and shuffled his feet. “Nix, you’re drunk.”

“Yeah, I am. I’m drunk most of the time, aren’t I? Christ, I think I’ve been drunk most of my days for the past ten years,” Nix noted, his voice matter-of-factly disappointed. 

“You should hang up and go to bed,” Dick said. 

Nix ignored him. “You helped me with that, though. You carried my booze for me. You gifted that whole wine cellar to me.”

Dick felt old anger flaring up, so strong and sudden that he felt his whole body trembling with it. “That’s not on me! You made that choice! You! You chose the habit and you kept it up! Just because I – I didn’t understand then! And I tried to help you stop, afterwards, but you didn’t want to give it up!” 

He felt an old wound ripped open and a spiteful prickling in his eyes. He expected a fight, that familiar arguing with the familiar excuses and reasons and stories and ‘this is just how it is’ and ‘everyone does it, okay?’, but what he got was a deep sigh. 

“Yeah, you’re right.” Nix was definitely drunk but sounded proper and to the point just like he had been in Europe and nowhere else since. 

That angered Dick more than any petty argument might have, mostly because it was strange and new and as such felt like a slap in the face. “You want to know what happened, Nix? You happened. Whatever we had, you ruined it. You loved whiskey and parties and drifting through life more than you ever cared about me.” 

The receiver rattled as Nix took a deep breath, held it and then slowly released it. Dick squeezed the receiver with both hands now, his spine rigidly straight and palms clammy. 

Nix huffed. “I did, didn’t I?” There was no fight in his voice, but no defeat either. Just a calm, slightly melancholic note. 

Dick couldn’t bring himself to repeat any of what he had just said or to think up anything more to say. 

Nix didn’t seem to expect him to, just went on in his thought-out manner: “I drank because it was what I had always done and what the men in my family had always done. I drank to not feel like shit all the time, and I drank to forget. I worked for my father even though I don’t believe in tradition or respect him or his work, and I took his side when he acted like a vicious son of a bitch towards you. I could have left, but I didn’t, and I let my father treat me like dirt because I kept hoping that one day he wouldn’t. And I stayed so I could keep giving you the lifestyle.” 

Dick was holding his breath and listening intently, but now he had to interrupt: “I never wanted the lifestyle!”

Nix huffed again, this time almost laughing. “Yeah, I know. But without my family name and fortune I would have been only me, and the thing that I feared the most was that you would see me just as I am, in all my pathetic misery, and leave me.”

Dick had to turn his face towards the ceiling. “Nix – “ 

“So I destroyed us first.” 

Dick squeezed his eyes shut again. “There never was an ‘us’. Half the time I didn’t even know if you remembered the… the nights.” 

Nix hummed in sad agreement. “I remembered,” he said, the line rattling again, “I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I think I always knew what you wanted, but I always avoided it. I told myself I was just being tactful or funny or practical, but the truth is…. The truth is that I was so afraid of losing you that I didn’t even have you in the first place.” 

Dick swallowed.

Nix went on: “And I called you to tell you that I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I was such a coward and that I hurt you. I’m sorry I didn’t even realize it then, and that I brushed it all off so I wouldn’t have to try to change and risk discovering that I couldn’t.” 

A long moment of heavy silence followed. Dick rubbed his eyes harshly with the heel of his palm and felt a deep exhaustion that had nothing to do with the late hour. 

Nix took an audibly deep breath. “I also wanted to tell you that I’m quitting. I can’t do this anymore if I want to live, and I think I’ve finally realized that I do want to live, just for my own sake.”

“Hey, good for you, Lew,” Dick congratulated him, his voice thick,” I’m sure your wife will appreciate that.”

Nix huffed again, a little joyless laugh. “Yeah, no. I’m divorced now – again. It didn’t… Well, let’s just say that I don’t think I’ll ever be a husband. I’m out of a job too, and moving out. I came to the conclusion that if I want to live, I can’t stay here any longer.” 

“Oh,” Dick said, his mouth suddenly dry. Nix had spoken of wanting to move and make it on his own several times before, but this was the first time he had actually taken any practical steps towards making it a reality – at least after enlisting in the army. Steps towards all of that, except for – “But you’re still drunk now.”

Nix didn’t even try to deny it. “I got rid of every bottle I had, but this one had a few drinks in it still, so I decided to take my last sips of whiskey before kicking the habit. And then I decided to call you.” 

“So you did,” Dick agreed. 

Nix hummed almost contently. The sound was a familiar one, and Dick hated how easily he could imagine Nix how he was, lounging in a chair with his feet up, his hair messy and carelessly combed back with his fingers, his brown eyes tired but twinkling, his cheeks rough with the dark beard that had always grown faster than weeds in a garden. The image was as clear as a memory from yesterday, and Dick felt an odd sense of relief for that. 

“What do you want from me, Lew?” Dick asked in a pliant sigh. He felt strangely disarmed and bare before Nix’s determined honesty, like an exposed nerve, and with reluctance and fear he knew that should Nix ask anything of him, he would do it. 

Nix sighed again, and this time Dick could swear he heard pain in it. “I don’t have the right to ask you anything. But I wanted to call you, hear your voice and tell you the truth. That you were always right and that I understand everything you said to me back then. I needed you to know that it was all my fault, and that I am sorry.” 

“Lew… I – ”

“And I always meant to tell you, that the only time in my life that I have been truly happy was when I was with you. And that I loved you, and that I still do.” 

Dick leaned his back to the wall and slid down until he was sitting on the floor. He felt small and silly like a child, sitting there on the cold floor in the dark, willingly speaking with someone from his past who had just decided to call him in the dead of night. 

“You’re drunk, Lew,” Dick muttered. 

“Yeah, a bit.” 

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he continued, and before Nix got the chance to argue, he added: “If you still remember that in the morning when you’re sober, give me a call.” After that, Dick hung up the telephone and went back to bed, exhaustion claiming him almost immediately when his head hit the pillow of his lonely bed. 

The morning dawned pale and bright, and Dick wasn’t entirely sure if he had dreamed up the phone call last night or not. It wouldn’t certainly have been the first time something like that had happened, be it a phone call, a dip of the mattress that made him reach over, or a knock on the door announcing a surprise guest to his breakfast table. 

Dick brewed himself coffee just as usual and thought about the night call. The more he thought about it, the more it felt like something he would have dreamed up. It definitely had everything he could ever dream of, but at the same time it also felt so real, like he had really been startled properly awake and gotten out of bed. Even his heart ached more than after a usual dream.

He wouldn’t let it interfere with his morning routine though. Dick dressed for work as usual, combed his hair as usual and made himself a cup of coffee as usual, and after a while he was almost entirely sure he had just had a dream. 

He put a spoonful of sugar in his coffee and stirring it wandered to the hallway. The telephone was on its place on the wall as it should, quiet and unassuming. Dick leaned on the wall next to it, sipping his coffee, and set one hand on the receiver.


End file.
